The Whirlwind Part 2

"When the music should be coming out of every car, there is a silence all over downtown. Where a community of celebration should abound, I walk the sterile gardens where life is on pause." - Eugene Hutz, Gogol Bordello

The week carried on and carried me with it! I feel like the first week was hard to get through, still feeling out people and the courses, unable to detect where I'd be taken. Most, if not all, of my teachers are employed in the publishing industry, and working at Penguin. We examined almost all of the multiplicitous facets of publishing - editorial, contracts, rights, production, business, marketing, psychology - it goes on. Though the weather made an ill turn from sunny metropolis to dowager-dull, I still went out and explored, fell in a few puddles, and took as many pictures as my SD card could manage. There is still so much I have yet to see!

Many long streetcar and subway rides later, racing through the underground and clattering past the bountiful Lake Ontario, I fell into two really cool events at the end of the week.

May 6, 2010 The Young Publishers of Canada @ The Artful Dodger

First of all, what an apt place for people who have invested their lives in the business of books. Second, it was a really sweet pub filled with some amazing people I am glad I had the chance to meet. I went with my friend Andrea, who I met through Humber, and we ambitiously forayed into a world of putting yourself out there. I listened with a somewhat embarrassingly doe-eyed awe as grilled a couple of people from University of Toronto Press about their jobs, and all star struck I admitted they inspired me. And though kind of corny, it's true. I'm still a supa-youngin', and I have so much to learn in this wide wide world. Toronto is the nano-tip of an iceberg I can scarce imagine, and just being able to talk to people in production, rights, or even the assistant editor of Random House made me all starstruck with awe. Not because of the celebrity status (because as I'm learning, you are only a celeb to your peers and clients!), but because it all seems so attainable, especially when you get to hang out with people who have been where you are. And where am I? I'm at the 'working hard and dreaming of a career you are in love with' phase, and maybe it's the small-town in me talking, but I am unabashed! I am so excited to get started in publishing, do an internship and maybe - God/epic loans willing - one day start up my own press. Getting to meet up with the YPC was a fun way of getting that little step closer.

You can look these lovely people up on Facebook for future events if you are interested/want to support them! If you are in the Toronto area, you should try to make it to a meet next time :) However, Andrea and I did not stay very long, for down the street was another extremely important event.

May 6, 2010 - an hour later

The Toronto Reference Library w/ Yann Martel

Although the buzz about Yann Martel's Beatrice & Virgil had literally just kicked into gear when I arrived in Toronto, I was really interested to hear him read and defend the mixed reviews the book has received. Although I had read Life of Pi many years ago in school, I had forgotten the free-flowing wave of his prose and was very thrilled to go to this event. He also discussed his What is Stephen Harper Reading project, which is a very interesting movement that I wish was having the desired effect. To know that my PM isn't a very well read person, or isn't even vaguely interested in replying to a literary outreach like this, kind of makes me a little nervous! For more information on that project, you can go here: http://www.whatisstephenharperreading.ca/

After the reading followed a discussion moderated by CBC's Carol Off. It was a very frank discussion addressing the criticisms the new book has received, his feelings and struggle about trying to create a fragmented allegory about the holocaust, if he's gotten a response to taxidermists about it, and his recent letter from Obama and his daughter. It was a very fascinating discussion and debate, and I wish it had gone on longer! However, I did get him to sign my copy of Life of Pi, and also asked him his opinion on eBooks. After discussing it all week ad infinitum from the publisher's point of view, it was refreshing to chat candidly to the author about it - after all, it is his work changing shape. PS - he loves them!

More to come!